Links

While I haven’t posted since the beginning of February, I still have been maintaining my language studies. Although it feels a bit like cheating, my language practice has been almost 100% listening throughout March for both of my language. Heavy emphasis has been on radio broadcasts that I am able to listen to while working. If anyone is interested, I’ve been finding broadcasts through ListenLive.eu. The site provides plenty of links to music, news, weather, and other types of broadcasts from numerous cities throughout Europe. For my German in particular, it has been a great resource as I have enjoyed hearing some of the different accents throughout Germany and other German-speaking countries. Of course, the Swiss “accent” was most interesting to hear but did require a bit more attention and thus was not the best to listen to casually while working.

As for future plans, I keep saying that I want to do something besides listening. One way of doing that is to try some extensive reading. I don’t have a *lot* of books or magazines to read in either of my L2s, but that’s what the internet is for, right? I stumbled on the idea of extensive reading (again) by catching up on some posts from Bakunin learns Thai (an worthwhile read when you have the time). He was invited to take part in an extensive reading challenge called the Tadoku contest. While I do not plan to join the contest, I don’t think it would hurt to add some more reading into my schedule.

While I am not going to promise an exact number, the plan for this month is to devote my usual 20 minutes of at least one of my two languages per day to reading for pleasure. I won’t put any limits on the content as long as it is in the target language (German or Spanish). Today, I started out with some basic wiki articles about very commonplace things that I am already familiar with. For example, I read through the German articles on ketchup and hamburgers. Of course, I already know plenty about both topics, but I’ve never really learned about them nor discussed them in German. It was a good refresher on some basic vocabulary that I haven’t used in ages (such as Ursprung), and I easily understood some cognates that I’d never officially learned (such as Sellerie and Cayennepfeffer).

Well, that’s all I have time for now. Until…whenever the next time is!

Sir Ryan

P.S. If anybody hassles me enough, I can go through my logs for February and March to see how much time I put in.

P.P.S. If Eva is still alive/around, I would imagine that somebody or another might appreciate an update from her. From what I hear, she’s been playing with Sanskirt of late.